Non-whites more influenced by Obama's blackness than whites are; Half think whites have too much political influence

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," violent" or responsible for their own troubles.

As Inductivist remarks, these descriptions are presumably in comparison to other groups, and consequently can be seen as showing the percentage of whites who are actually paying attention to what their lying eyes are telling them.

Rhetoric aside, white uncertainty over a black President (who has a history of promoting black interests at the expense of whites that extends back decades) might cost Obama the election. In multiracial societies, people tend to vote less for policy positions and ideas on governance and more in solidarity with the candidate most representative of themselves. In the words of Lee Kuan Yew:

In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.

As the NAM population continues to grow, quality-of-life concerns, wealth transfers, and other special privileges like affirmative action preferences will continue to be felt by a greater number of whites and with ever-increasing acuteness. The Democratic party will continue to become less white, while the Republican party's white composition holds steady at about 90%.

Instead, we have to work backwards and are only able to get responses for the 31% of respondents who are not white, rather than looking at Hispanics and blacks as separate groups.

Ten percent of whites report being less likely to vote for Obama because he is black (7% of non-whites share that view, see pg18 of pdf). In contrast, 16% of non-whites (and 6% of whites) are more likely to vote for him for the same reason**. So non-whites are 60% more likely to be influenced favorably by Obama's blackness than whites are to be influenced unfavorably by it. More generally, non-whites are 43% more likely to be influenced by Obama's race (23% of non-whites surveyed said they were influenced one way or the other by Obama's blackness) than whites (16% of whites surveyed) are.

Only one-third of the non-white population surveyed is actually black, so assuming non-black minorities share the same sentiments as whites with regards to Obama's blackness suggests 49% of blacks are more likely to vote for Obama because he's black while only 1% are less likely to vote for him for the same reason.

So in yet another way we see it verified that blacks are more 'racist' than whites are, and suggested that other non-whites are also more 'racist' than whites are. Although it's never reported in the major media, that's nothing new to members of the Steveosphere. Where the AP-Yahoo poll really could've provided insight is in asking the same questions about whites, Hispanics, Asians, etc that it asked about blacks, and then broke the results down by race. Why has there not been a query of the public on how McCain's whiteness influences voters? I suspect I know, but would certainly like empirical verification or refutation, particularly to see if a greater percentage of white voters are less likely to vote for a white candidate because of his whiteness than are less likely to vote for a black candidate because of his blackness. Unfortunately, this poll doesn't provide that, either.

The poll does reveal that half of non-whites resent what they see as undue white influence in politics (p19 of the pdf). Forty-seven percent of non-whites assert whites have "too much influence" when it comes to politics**. Only 5% say whites have too little influence. Whites, in contrast, are more likely to feel blacks have too little influence (24%) than too much influence (16%). I have a feeling demographic changes are driving average time preference in the US higher, but if things continue as they're proceeding now, patience is all non-whites need to realize the reduction in white influence half of them desire.

Finally, 38% of whites (and 28% of non-whites**) said they agreed at least partially with the statement that "it's really just a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would just try harder, they would be as well off as whites".

Yahoo calls this a "latent prejudice" among whites. How flattering. But what other potential answers are available for why blacks fare more poorly than whites? I see two: 1) Blacks have lower average IQs than whites do, and differences in outcomes largely reflect this, not some ubiquitious but invisible structural conspiracy (my position), or 2) Whites, who are inherently racist, are oppressively holding blacks down.

These respondents thus went with the least 'racist' response they had at their disposal. Their downfall was refusing to simply answer in the negative, since the question was yes/no rather than multiple choice.

* Putative, because the poll gauged how participants responded to various adjectives describing blacks, not how these perceptions are said to factor into their Presidential voting decisions. White America is very individualistic, especially when it comes to race. I'd feel more secure living in just about any neighborhood that is 90% white than one that is 90% black, but there are more than a couple black friends I'd ask to housesit for me before I'd ask several whites I know to do so. I'm hardly unusual in that regard.

** The percentage for non-whites is figured algebraically and consequently might vary from its true value a couple of percentage points in either direction, depending on rounding of the "white" and "all respondents" numbers by the pollsters, who present everything in whole percentages.

6 comments:

As the NAM population continues to grow, quality-of-life concerns, wealth transfers, and other special privileges like affirmative action preferences will continue to be felt by a greater number of whites and with ever-increasing acuteness. The Democratic party will continue to become less white, while the Republican party's white composition holds steady at about 90%.

I think that Republicans are going to get clobbered in this election and will move leftward to try to regain some power in 2010. I think that the n ext step for the Republicans will be to try to out-do Obama on issues like banning racial profiling and extending amnesty for illegal immigrants, so that they can show the public that they're actually a step ahead of the democrats. They need to gain the votes of minorities even if only to prove that they aren't just "the white party", because if that happens, not only will they lose the votes of the minorities, but they'll lose the votes of most white people too. Know what I mean? So, they need to establish a large visible-minority Republican constituency fast if they are going to be able to survive. It doesnt have to be as big as that of the Democrats, and it doesnt even have to include black people; it just has to be something.

Perhaps the best way to go about this is to start a broad outreach to anyone who is a Christian and has generally conservative viewpoints on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion, because if there's one Republican constituency that isn't shrinking, it's Christian conservatives. A lot of poor people go to Christian charities and have generally conservative viewpoints on social issues. If the Republicans can convince people to vote in accordance with their viewpoints on political issues instead of simply voting for their own ethnic identity, they might be able to survive the growth in the Hispanic population. But like I said, I think that they will be a very different party from the way they are today. Some people here might not even vote for them, since they may be embracing anti-science views such as not believing in evolution. According to a page I found on Google, 30% of Republicans believe in evolution and only 57% of Democrats do. I expected a much stronger partisan divide there, since evolution is a pretty good proxy for membership in a conservative branch of Christianity. But I guess that a lot of "conservative" Christians are really black Democrats or Hispanic Democrats. And there are some Republicans who aren't Christian and don't believe in evolution but just join the party to vote for lower taxes.

Sorry I didnt mean this post to get so long. I kind of got carried away.

"As the NAM population continues to grow, quality-of-life concerns, wealth transfers, and other special privileges like affirmative action preferences will continue to be felt by a greater number of whites and with ever-increasing acuteness. The Democratic party will continue to become less white, while the Republican party's white composition holds steady at about 90%."

The mortgage meltdown proves we are rapidly reaching the point where the multicultural Ponzi starts to breakdown due to there being too many NAM economic "takers" and not enough white "producers" to sustain this amazing pyramid scheme.

Without subprime loans, it will become harder for the growing NAM population to get good housing, unless the government uses increasingly overt welfare transfer schemes, something that whites won't like.

So either we have a big boost to the budget deficit via a bigger welfare state or the NAMs get squeezed financially through a lack of transffer payments.

When America was 90% white and 9% black, it was conceivable we could have provided a generous safety net for our black underclass to relax social tensions. But with NAMs being imported by the millions from over seas proportion of white taxpayers needed to prop up this system is dwindling.

And the subslime mess is far from the only financial crisis our stupid policies are going run into.

There is the entitlement crunch due to our growing elderly population that will hamstring the federal budget and further limit how much transfer payments to NAMs whites will be willing put up with.

SOMETHING has got to give, and if it is going to give, it would be better for it to happen sooner rather than later.

I've changed my mind about who to vote for - and I'm in the swing state of Virginia. Over at GNXP, Godless Capitalist persuaded me to vote McCain because GC worried Obama will shut down population genetics research.

But I now think McCain will just delay the inevitable collapse. If this pyramid scheme is indeed near breaking point, then I will have to vote Obama in the hopes that he will accelerate the economic collapse faith in the multicultural regime in the same way people lost faith in the USSR regime in the late 1980's.

As long as the collapse occurs relatively quickly, whites will be able to rebuild. But the longer we postpone the inevitable, the harder it will be to change course.

"I think that Republicans are going to get clobbered in this election and will move leftward to try to regain some power in 2010."

I agree, but if you think we're in bad shape now, what then? We will have a left-of-center religious party (the GOP) and what becomes of the Democrats? They can't move right, so they'll move further left, probably becoming a quasi-communist party. They won't call themselves that - note that they've been a socialist party for the last 30 years, they haven't owned up to that as yet.

I still think the end result of all this is going to be a fracturing of the USA along ethnic, cultural, and linguistic lines. A second civil war isn't going to happen as some speculate. I think the government might try bribery (as they do in Canada) to keep the minority culture attached to the larger society, but I suspect at some point the Anglo plurality, by then concentrated in the mountain states, the upper midwest, and the south will no longer give a crap what happens to the southern halves of CA, AZ, NM, and TX and come up with some kind of "severance package" so as to extricate themselves from the dysfunctional region. Of course, the only difficulty with that is that the new, smaller USA will have an illegal immigration problem not only with Mexico and Central America, but with the new entity, whatever that's called.

I've a feeling you're correct SC, but like Sgt Joe Friday, I find it extremely disheartening. It was conspicuously rightist principles that brought about the "Republican Revolution" of '94--with 90% of their voting base white, mostly middle class (in terms of wealth and educational attainment), the Republican party will never be able to successfully move to the left of the Democratic party without forcing a realignment of that voting base (unless it is done through subterfuge, which cynically the Palin pick for VP can be seen as--choose a 'conservative' representative of the people to gain their support, but say nothing of the issues they care about, like immigration, as was the case at the RNC).

Another option is to make the GOP look more and more like Mike Huckabee--socially conservative, big, righteous centralized government. Half Sigma has pointed out that the Republican party's average voter has decreased in IQ over the last several elections (and that's confirmed by exit poll results on educational attainment and income).

JBS,

It seems to me confirmed now that we're living through the secular decline of the US as a first-rate, first world, superpower. This bailout stuff is a nightmare:

- The Community Reinvestment Act is probably the worst culprit. Giving CRA ratings to lenders, terrorizing them with threats of racism, telling them not to follow statistical parameters for loan conditions (and making loans at all), screaming "redlining". Well, force companies to loan to poor minorities who are unlikely to be able to keep up with their mortgage payments and you get the subprime disaster that started this whole financial crisis. I've seen estimates that of the subprime foreclosures, 50% of holders are black, 40% Hispanic, and 10% white.

- Debt to net capital ratios of 30 to 1. Traditionally, they've not even been half that. These investment banks essentially create money (M3 and M4, I think, but the various money supplies confuse me--maybe Andres would know ;) by backing loan obligations that they've purchased and then reselling them without having the money to make good on all of them at once (or in this case, of 1/30th of them at once!). So if debt obligations start going unfulfilled (as is the case whenever equity--in this case, real estate values--decreases), suddenly they have to start making good on these obligations, one after the other. Except they can't, because they don't have the money. They never actually did. To try and get the money, they can call in other debt obligations from their debitors (those who owe them money). Except everyone is having trouble making good on their loans for the same reason, so that doesn't work too well. In other words, they are holding promises of others to pay back money, which they are on the hook to pay for if these people cannot. And these people couldn't, because the home equity increases that were driving their 'income' stopped. So they start dropping into insolvency like flies.

When people make the "greed" charge I usually roll my eyes, but in this case I think it is spot on. Or maybe you call it extreme recklessness or risk-taking. Whatever, the end result is the same.

- GSEs. Fannie and Freddie offered better rates than their competitiors because they had the implicit backing of the federal government. That caused a major market distortion that, aided by absurdly low interest rates, flooded the market with easy money. So now we have inflationary pressures in addition to a housing glut and a massive organization (Fannie) that is probably upside down.

- The $700 billion bailout and the nationalization of AIG. Unbelievable. This is what happens in third world countries and decaying quasi-socialists nations in Europe. We are living during the secular decline of the United States as the world's premier power. I've no question about that now. We're about to get racked by the baby boomers retiring, in addition to the continued increase in dependency that is coming from other demographic trends (basically whites shrinking as a percentage of the working age population).

Why is Henry Paulson, who worked for Goldman Sachs a couple of years ago, now heading a $700 billion bailout of the industry who used to be a part of? This is 'crony capitalism' similar to what the Democrats did with Fannie and Freddie, staffing them with dried up political hacks like Gorelick.

I don't understand why it matters if investment banks go under. There is still this enormous industry known as commercial banking that makes loans with real collateral, rather than complicated paper assurances. I'd like to see them fail. So what if it slows down economic lending activity--that's exactly what we need to get things back in balance. But this obsession with economic growth over all else (plus a good deal of special favoritism to donors behind the scenes) precludes any concern over inflation (which surreptitiously steals away accumulated wealth) or deficits or the integrity of the dollar.

Do you realize that this package will cost more than the Iraq war has up to this point? Oh, but we'll make the money back, just like we would in Iraq on the oil. Yeah, I'm convinced. The fools who oversaw the debacle are now going to tell us how to get out of it. Uh huh.

A number of things could happen. The Democrats could move further left, becoming a European-like leftist party, as you said. Or the two parties could simply become identical on economic and some other issues, and end up fighting over other things. Looking over the data more, I'm not sure that capitalizing on social issues would be such a good idea, because although Christianity is growing, Christians' views on social issues are also moving left ... so most likely, there will have to be a major shift in which the Republicans take a position further "left" than the Democrats on some particular issue (probably related to immigration), and stick to it, hoping to grow by peeling off the radical Democrats instead of the moderates. Conservative voters will continue to vote Republican and thus be of no great loss to the party. The difficulty will be in convincing voters that the "new" GOP is real.

How did the Republicans pull off the sudden reversal of their fortunes in the South in the 1960's anyway? Was it just a matter of doing nothing while the Democrats embraced the black leaders?

Leftist progressives and conservatives both voting for the Repulibcan party? I can see how some Nader-esque leftists and paleoconservatives could come together on some things (ie foreign policy), but I can't imagine a Republican party moving in the McCain direction would ever be the organization to realize that.

It wasn't until the eighties that Republicans really reversed their fortunes in the South, was it? Carter dominated the South in '76, and his home state of Georgia was one of the few states he won in '80.

Since the Civil War, the South hasn't opposed any war the US has ever engaged in. Goldwater's aggressive stance towards squelching communism in countries up for grabs might've helped him in the South, where he did well.